THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 763 



mented mare's-railk, the Ashantees with sorgho-beer, the Mexicans 

 with pulque (aloe-sap), the Chinese and Persians with opium and 

 hasheesh ( Cannabis Indica), the Peruvians with the acrid leaves of the 

 coca-tree. Even mineral poisons have their votaries. There arc thou- 

 sands of arsenic-eaters in the southern Alps. Arsenious acid, anti- 

 mony, cinnabar, and acetate of copper, are mistaken for digestive 

 tonics by Spanish and South American miners. By the process of 

 fermentation, rice, sago, honey, sugar, durrha (Sorghum vulgaris), 

 dates, plums, currants, and innumerable other berries and fruits, have 

 been converted into stimulants. The pastor of a Swiss colony on the 

 Llanos Ventosos in the Mexican State of Oaxaca told me that the 

 Indians of that neighborhood stupefy themselves with macerated 

 cicuta, a kind of water-hemlock, and remarked that the delirium and 

 the subsequent reaction of a cicuta-debauch correspond exactly to the 

 successive phases of a whisky-spree, the only difference being in the 

 price of the tipple. If intoxication were a physiological necessity, it 

 would, indeed, be folly to buy the stimulant at the dram-shops, since 

 cheaper poisons would serve the same purpose. A dime's worth of 

 arsenic would protract the stimulant-fever for a week, with all the 

 alternate excitements and dejections of an alcohol-revel. A man 

 might get used to phosphorus and inflame his liver with the same 

 lucifer-matches he uses to light his lamp ; we might gather jimson- 

 weed or aconite, or fuddle with mushrooms, like the natives of Kam- 

 chatka, who prepare a highly-intoxicating liquor from a decoction of 

 the common fly-toadstool (Agaricus maculatus). 



These facts teach us two other valuable lessons, viz., that every 

 poison can become a stimulant, and that the alcohol-habit is charac- 

 terized bg all the symptoms which distinguish the poison-hunger from 

 a natural appetite. One radical fallacy identifies the stimulant-habit 

 in all its disguises : its victims mistake a process of irritation for a 

 process of invigoration. The self-deception of the dyspeptic philoso- 

 pher, who hopes to exorcise his blue-devils with the fumes of the 

 weed that has caused his sick-headaches is absolutely analogous to 

 that of the pot-house sot who tries to drown his care in the source of 

 all his sorrows ; and there is no reason to doubt that it is precisely the 

 same fallacy which formerly ascribed remedial virtues to the vilest 

 stimulants of the drug-store, and that, with few exceptions, the 

 poisons administered for "medicinal" purposes have considerably 

 increased, instead of decreasing, the sum of human misery. 



The milder stimulants (light beer, cider, and narcotic infusions) 

 would be comparatively harmless, if their votaries could confine them- 

 selves to a moderate dosis. For sooner or later the tonic is sure to 

 pall, while the morbid craving remains, and forces its victim either to 

 increase the quantity of the wonted stimulant, or else resort to a 

 stronger poison. A boy begins with ginger-beer and ends with ginger- 

 rum ; the medical " tonic " delusion progresses from malt-extract to 



